


Golden Hoard

by orphan_account



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abuse, Dubious Consent, Lima Syndrome, M/M, Shapeshifting, Soul Bond, Stockholm Syndrome, not bestiality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 12,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dragons steal gold and jewels from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live. But Smaug has never seen hair this colour, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbetaed; if anyone would like to beta, or if they see a mistake and point it out, I would be very grateful! Concrit is more than welcome. This fic relies on the premise of Legolas having blonde hair!
> 
> Written for the prompt: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/7346.html?thread=16114354#t16114354

Legolas woke to pain. It seared across his skin like the feet of centipedes, digging deep into his bones and scraping air like sand through his lungs; and still, even only brushing consciousness, Legolas forced his body into silence and stillness – for he was not unaware. Had he been the sort to wake unaware he would not have been a warrior and a captain of the forests of Eryn Galen, which the outsiders, justly or not, called Mirkwood. So it was that through his agony, the blindness of tight shut eyes and the thick stench of blood in his nose, Legolas knew that he had not been returned to the halls of his father, for fresh, clean air swept even the darkest of corners there; nor did he lie in the buildings of men, for the stone under his fingers was too smooth and the ceiling far too high. It was certainly not the home of goblins – if only because he awoke alive, unbroken and in possession of all of his limbs, if not skin.

The options left, together with the terrible memory of fire and death from before darkness took him, left him with fear and wishing in a bout of cowardice quite unlike himself for unconsciousness once more. Yet there was nothing he could do now that he had started waking, feeling the full extent of his blistered and blanched flesh and unable not to ask himself why he was in the very heart of the dragon’s pit and yet still alive. Had any others of the patrol he had been on survived also, and if so were they safely home or here as well? They were good people all of them, sharing food, stories and laughter on the dark road, and it tore Legolas’ kind heart to think them dead or suffering. And he himself, alone in this dungeon – merely food kept fresh and close-by, or perhaps as Thranduil’s son a hostage? Maybe another purpose existed for him sensible only to the minds of dragons. Such thoughts plagued Legolas as he lay there and drew strength around himself to ward away the pain, feigning senselessness and praying that any earlier movements might not have been seen.

Smaug the dragon was great in size and there were many small tunnels throughout the mountain that Legolas would be safe in. Now if only he could reach them!

Legolas opened his eyes and looked around. He took great care in his actions, despite the fear that told him to make haste and the silence saying with near certainty that he was alone in the hall. Caution was rarely frivolous when you dealt with dragons, after all, and Legolas was canny enough to remember it.

He lay on a raised platform next to a towering wall, where sconces held burning torches. Great pillars rose around him, stone carved in straight lines and cold angles unpleasing to his elvish eye, that did not seem placed inside the hall so much as the hall hollowed out around them. And gold, silver and jewels – such quantities of it Legolas had never thought possible to gather in one place! It covered the floor, deep and rolling hills and hummocks fathoms deep. Coins it was for the most part but plates and goblets as well, armour and jewellery enough to clothe a city. Gems made dots of colour in the sea of metal.

A dragon’s hoard but no dragon, not unless he were buried beneath it all – and even then holding his breath and keeping the steady pound of his heart still. Legolas swallowed to clear his throat and allowed himself the smallest of hopes that he might just escape. There was no exit on his platform but one tunnel only a short sprint away – his body protested at the very thought, in sore need of healing, but it paid heed to his spirit’s command and not the other way around: escape would be painful, pushing his body to breaking point and perhaps beyond, but he could do it.

Later, Legolas would wonder how he could have possibly missed what he had done until that moment. For as he finally stirred he was struck with the abrupt, horrible realisation that injury was not all that restrained him. Not only did shackles bind his wrists together behind his back, his ankles likewise hobbled, but the chain between his wrists connected him to the wall via a deep set ring. Legolas didn’t cry out in his frustration, though it was a near thing, for despair from hope suddenly lost is always terrible. The chain between his cuffs allowed several good inches of slack, and he pulled and twisted in his fetters though they budged not one bit; his burnt skin cracked open and bleed, sloughing off to expose raw flesh, and the fear from before seemed to come back tenfold stronger.

When at last he found the self control to stop fighting the metal and fall still, an embarrassingly long time for one usually so mild, Legolas did his best to pull the rags that were the remnants of his burnt clothes around himself and rested against the wall to let its chill soothe the wounds he was frustratingly unable to tend. It was as he sat in silence that he came to two unpleasant conclusions: the first was that he had underestimated the severity of his injuries – both that the fire had done to his body and the fear to his mind – that the chains should have gone unnoticed; the second was that someone existed here who had the dexterity to fasten locks and chains, and who served the dragon’s will.

Perhaps there were dwarves who had lived here, kept and forced into servitude, or men stolen from nearby towns. Not elves, as every death and disappearance of their own was identified, and none had happened where a dragon might roam. It was certainly not goblins or their like, for their foul touch would have lingered. And if it were dwarves or men then did he have an ally in this place, or not? Even if they served the Enemy willingly they could still be tricked or bought in ways a dragon would laugh at.

It was not until that day and a good part of the next had passed that Legolas’ unhappy musings were broken, the torches gone out and the only light that which was reflected down from tiny, out-of-sight windows which let in neither sound nor scent of outside. Wind whistled in far off tunnels, then went silent; it was replaced by the heavy, clicking footsteps of some massive and clawed beast. Breath from great bellows of lungs became audible, then finally the slow beat of a giant heart.

Smaug entered the hall and instantly his orange eyes turned to Legolas, who stood straight backed and did not cower, not even when the full length of the dragon seemed to fill the very entirety of the chamber as outstretched wings and claws and teeth in a gaping mouth. Smaug came up to the platform that Legolas stood on, the end of his long snout resting on the stone, and the heat from his breath hurt like knives on Legolas’ broken skin.

His body stood giant and sinuous, yellow and red scales gleaming as if polished armour, tinted metallic blue; his wings were vast and far from the flimsiness of bat wings – rather the membrane was thick and the bones like heavy steel scaffolds. Beneath him Legolas felt tiny and weak.

‘Good morning,’ Smaug said. He sounded amused, and the pupils of his vast eyes had dilated into fat diamonds. Legolas noted distantly that though Smaug’s mouth opened and closed as he spoke, his lips barely moved, and his tongue not forming the words as elven tongues did.

‘I can not tell, this far underground,’ Legolas said, when Smaug seemed to be waiting for a reply.

‘Let me know what makes a good morning to a fair one like yourself, and I will judge for you.’ Smaug rolled the words in his barrel chest and coated them with amusement.

‘I would prefer to judge for myself,’ Legolas said. In truth he did not quite know what he was saying, and did not care enough to keep the insolence from his answers.

The sound that bubbled up out between Smaug’s teeth was undoubtedly a laugh. ‘A pity! There are some things we cannot sacrifice for pleasantries. But come, if my morning was under sky breakfasting on five wood elves – for meat butchered and left in the sun the day before last they kept remarkably well! – yours was here with you far underground. Have you no opinion on your time in my halls?’

They was words intended to rile and although Legolas knew this, rile they did. Anger and agony of the spirit blinded him to wounds of the flesh and Legolas pulled violently at his chains. Five immortal lives and all that held, made cheap by petty jeers. His friends – mothers, fathers and children – who had not survived after all.

‘You ask my opinion, O dragon? Know then that I think Thror’s mountain rooms vulgar enough, and your presence here serves only to despoil them further,’ Legolas spat, falling still with the exception of his heaving chest. Already he was sick of this game, and part of him hoped that maybe he could enrage the dragon enough to kill him and be done with it. He would hardly be able, after all, to merely walk away.

It was not the case. Smaug only blew out a long breath, scalding hot. Legolas recoiled instinctively but he could not escape, chained as he was; he coughed, unable to breathe. His eyes watered, fresh pain awaking with the old. When the exhalation finished at last he rasped for air, and Smaug waited a long time for silence before speaking again:

‘Tell me, are you very unusual in your colouring? My wings have taken me great distances yet I’ve seen no elves that shine golden, until you.’

His voice held no anger, but even so dread greater than before seemed to settle upon Legolas, for an idea occurred to him that he would have laughed at only minutes earlier. For he knew of the lust dragons held for gold, and he knew well the colour of his own hair – but to bring those truths together! Surely the very thought was an absurdity.

‘Of the firstborn the Vanyar are golden, but save for a few of their children it would take more than a dragon’s wings to find them. They live with Manwë in Valinor,’ Legolas said carefully, and wished desperately that he were anywhere but there, deep underground, pinned by Smaug’s gaze and questioning.

‘Then you are a child of the Vanyar?’ Smaug asked, voice patient and all the worse for it.

‘I am of the Sindarin folk, whose hair is dark; only in exceptions and oddities such as myself is it any other.’ Legolas replied truthfully, for he did not know what else he could say.

‘I see,’ said Smaug, and that was that: retreating his head he curled up in a mountain of gold, looking very pleased indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

Legolas was alone in the great hall, walking down the paths of memory and thought whilst ignoring the thirst that racked his body, when he heard footsteps – and not those of a beast but a person. He sat up, eyes wide and bright in the shadows where the torches had gone out and not been relit, half dreading the reveal and half hopeful.

The man who approached was pale skinned and grey eyed, with curling ginger hair and shapely bow lips. He wore mail and over it furs, cloth stitched with gold and gems, and he held an ornate lantern in one fine boned hand. He came unarmed and his expression was without malevolence; still, Legolas was not fooled for a second – only surprised, unpleasantly so, and not a little afraid.

It must have showed on his face. ‘Ah,’ said Smaug, setting down the lantern – for it was indeed Smaug the Golden, the last of the great dragons, whose skin-changing had, until that moment, been a very well kept secret. ‘So the stories of the clever eyes of elves aren’t all stories after all!’

Legolas stood, elegant even with the hobbles. He didn’t reply and didn’t give in to the feral terror of every creature ensnared before its enemy – for all that the form was handsome the man was strangely ugly to look at, soft flesh and mannish face somehow worse than scales. His spirit did not fit his body well at all, a rather obvious failing for those with keen eyes and the know-how of spirits and bodies, which all elves are born with. Legolas didn’t answer, instead thinking, a little wildly, that a man was very easy to break if you knew how – which he did – and whether the fact that it was actually a dragon would make any difference in the matter. The long muscles in his forearms jumped and the chain rattled.

Well, Legolas thought grimly. This was the answer to the riddle of his bindings and the mysterious servant at least.

‘You do not think me comely?’ Smaug said, ignoring Legolas’ silence as he stood just out of reach and lifted one hand to admire. On his fingers several fat, dwarven rings glinted in the light. ‘I had thought it would please you, my lovely golden one. Perhaps not. Would you prefer something else?’

Without waiting for an answer Smaug stepped forward, and it was if he had stepped from one body into another, that had, until that moment, been invisible. From no clear transition his face became lovely, his build sleeker, and his hair, now brown, fell around pointed ears.

It was the body of an elf, that was unmistakable. It was not, however, the spirit of one, and it would take much more than a dragon’s magic to hide such quantities of evil in one of the fair folk, at least successfully. Legolas hissed and recoiled, his fear momentarily forgotten, for the resulting creature was foul to consider.

‘Take back your snake-skin,’ he said, voice thick with anger. ‘Become a man again – become a dwarf, for all I care. But do not mock my people with your thin disguises. It sickens me.’

Smaug’s eyes narrowed in displeasure and his mouth twisted in false joviality. ‘Harsh words from such a pretty mouth!’ he said.

‘No harsher than you deserve, beast of Morgoth.’ Legolas spat out the last word as if it were a poison, the insult no less for the fact that it was true. He braced himself as Smaug strode forward but the backhand was still enough to send him to his knees, knocked off balance by the short chain and hobbles. It was also in that backhand that Legolas lost hope for a weakness in Smaug’s skin-changing, for no elf held that much strength, not even the great princes of old.

‘You should watch your tongue,’ Smaug said, and his fury was terrible. ‘Else you come across as ungrateful for your life and health!’

Legolas rose with difficulty; his face was numb, his wrists torn and both knees badly bruised. He was also deeply afraid. ‘Beat me or burn me,’ he said, lifting his proud head to look Smaug in the eye. ‘Threaten my life, my kin or my people! But I will not – I can not – look at your mockery in anything more than disgust. Elbereth herself will grow ugly ere you become any less an abomination!’

Smaug’s face twisted in rage and Legolas knew that he has spoken unwisely, though he did not regret it in his fey passion, not even as Smaug descended upon him then and beat him soundly. A man would have surely died from such violence and even a dwarf, the hardiest of Ilúvatar’s children, would not have escaped unbroken; as it was Smaug’s gripping fingers bruised and bloodied, his fists fractured bones and dislocated joints, and Legolas was bound and helpless in the onslaught, crying out with each fresh new wound. When it was at last done and he lay trembling on the ground, humbled by pain if nothing else, Smaug crouched and pulled him up by his soft golden hair.

Smaug’s mouth twisted in a sneer but he said nothing as his cold gaze roamed over the bloodied form in front of him, whose bruised eyes were filled even then with pained revulsion. Smaug dropped Legolas back to the cold stone ground and walked away without a word, changing into his vast dragon’s skin as he did so.

Legolas lay where he was discarded, not moving even as the lantern’s candle dwindled, guttered and went out, casting him back into gloom.


	3. Chapter 3

Smaug, in man’s form, toyed with a golden cup; it was garish but clean water swirled inside and Legolas forced himself not to look despite his body crying out in thirst. The same cup had been held up once before when Smaug had let him swallow his pride and drink, but that must have been near half a month ago. Even the elves were hard pressed to go so long on naught but air, and Legolas would throw away his pride to beg again for water had instinct told him not to interrupt what Smaug was about to say.

So he waited, sitting with folded legs and Smaug mirroring his position, self-satisfied as he admired his cup. It looked small in his hands, thick and inelegant.

‘Do you wish for a drink?’ It was hours before Smaug spoke. His tone was conversational.

‘Yes,’ Legolas said shortly. He knew that dragons like riddling speech – that was common lore – but did not trust his wits as they were to engage in word play. He felt weak, nauseated by the odour of his own decaying refuse left as far away as his chains would allow him to.

Smaug was, however, in the mood to be generous. He went over to Legolas, crouching by his side to lift the cup to Legolas’ mouth. Fresh, cold water spilt like a blessing down his sticky throat; he could have spat it at Smaug’s face just to ruin the possessive smile that grew there, but didn’t for all his desire to – he was not that rash, not after so long pinned under such a shrewd and unnerving eye. At any rate he still needed to heal, bones slow and itching in their regrowth, and to throw away precious water would be a fool’s move.

The small cup had only been half filled; far too soon it was empty and Legolas’ thirst all the more ravaging for being promised and then denied full respite. Smaug’s hand put the cup down to the floor then rose again to rest on Legolas’ shoulder in a display of mock companionship, gripping lightly. Legolas froze, forcing himself with some effort not to shrug Smaug away and violently so; nor did he dare turn his head to look Smaug straight on, instead watching at him out of the corner of an eye.

‘It must be tedious sitting still when there are so many treasures here to wander through,’ Smaug said slyly. He was looking at Legolas with a smile and narrowed eyes. ‘Would you like me to free you from this wall?’

‘And what promises would you extract from me for that gift?’ Legolas replied, tense with sudden anticipation and the fear of a misstep. His legs woke with an ache for the need to stretch and run.

Smaug’s smile widened. ‘None! I will bind you to nothing.’

‘Then what will you promise to me?’ Legolas said, trying desperately hard to think of all of the loopholes in Smaug’s words, before wondering whether a dragon would keep to his word either way. But he needed to be free.

‘A fine question! Come, you tell me. What vows should I take in return for setting you loose in my house?’ Smaug’s hand smoothed the fabric of Legolas’ tunic, sliding across his shoulder to down one arm, stopping inches short of his wrist and the steel cuff. The touch was demanding and acutely distracting.

‘Vow that I be punished,’ Legolas said, hesitant. He paused but Smaug did not interrupt, only waited with the air of a patient mentor. ‘Should I step outside these halls. Should I escape from the chains you leave locked. And should I take a weapon to hand.’

‘Well said. But are you sure you would not ask for more?’ Smaug drew out the sentence.

Legolas paused, examining every word for a catch. His heart pounded; the weight of Smaug’s presence was daunting. He could barely think around it. ‘No, I would not ask for more,’ Legolas said. His entire body seemed to thrum with the anticipation of pain for his insolence.

No pain came. Instead Smaug used a gentle hand to tilt Legolas’ head until they stared face to face. Smaug smiled, slow and full of assurance. ‘Very well. In return for your freedom I vow this: that should you step outside of these halls; should you escape from the chains I leave locked; or should you take a weapon to hand – I will find you and I will break your soft body. I will fly to the dwellings of your people and I will burn to the ground every tree that my flames find; every house, every soldier and child that gets in my way. Then I will return to you, and your chains will be tight enough that you will not have the breath to weep.’

Legolas said nothing in response, only held his shoulders straight and tense, and did not let himself turn his gaze from Smaug’s own. He remained motionless as Smaug unlocked the chain connecting his cuffs to the wall, then the hobbles around his ankles. The manacles themselves were left alone. Was it arrogance that led Smaug to forbid him the use of weapons but not his own body? Did fists and feet count as weapons, or had he truly not considered it at all?

A beat of silence stretched out after the chains fell to the floor in a rattle. Then Legolas burst up in an explosion of movement – using one shoulder, head tucked in, he knocked Smaug back, then lashed out with a kick to his thigh. As his foot connected Legolas felt the fractured bones in his leg grate together.

Smaug held more power, that was without doubt. But Legolas was faster and he had raw need lending him strength; ducking a fist he rolled awkwardly over his manacled hands and turning, hooked a foot behind Smaug’s knee to pull as hard as he could. This time Smaug fell with an oath and, quick as lightning, Legolas stamped down hard on his exposed throat.

Only no man lay beneath him but a dragon unfurling its wings, bowling Legolas backwards head over heels where he tumbled like a kicked stone. Landing badly he rolled away from a giant clawed foot, but the blunt tip of Smaug’s open jaws found him and pinned him to the ground, as strong as the inevitable crush of landslide. Teeth as long as his forearm clamped into his body; he lay immobile, forced down, and the awful realisation came that should Smaug breathe the smallest lick of fire now he would be wholly unable to escape it.

Thick, pink-grey skin covered the inside of Smaug’s mouth; his breath was as hot and dry as the palace forges in high summer. Legolas waited in helpless anticipation either to be freed, or set aflame, or for the jaws to clamp shut and tear him apart – none happened, and after a long moment he closed his eyes against the blaring heat. Smaug held motionless save for the great movement of his lungs, each breath stirring Legolas’ hair and tattered clothes.

Smaug did let go, eventually, and Legolas rolled away, kneeling before attempting shakily to stand. He said nothing, for Smaug’s demonstration of power was quite enough that anything else had become redundant – like a child, in the face of an adult’s authority, only just realising the futility of its tantrums. With his hands free to hold a bow or blade and Smaug unsuspecting Legolas knew he had a chance, but those were part of Smaug’s vow and the price of failure lay too high.

‘Do not dare strike me again,’ Smaug said, raw and inelegant in his fury.

Legolas remained silent, though he bowed his head for a moment in acknowledgement. His body hurt, and anger at both himself for his failure and Smaug for his cruelty mixed with it to run fast through him. So Smaug had merely been arrogant – or ignorant – enough not to consider that he might be vulnerable to one unarmed. If Smaug as a man could be cornered in one of the tunnels where a dragon could not squeeze, and if Legolas slipped his chains – but did he dare? Was he so sure that he could win, and was his own freedom worth the chance that he could not?

No, on both accounts. Smaug’s yellow eyes watched him and Legolas hated him deeply, furiously, to the very bone.


	4. Chapter 4

Thror’s kingdom was, for the most part, pitch black. A system of mirrors, far away windows and fires kept the main halls lit, if only dimly, but no such design gifted the rest of the tunnels. Their torches remained cold and sunlight did not penetrate far around the many corners. It was because of this that Legolas did not venture far but tarried in the buildings carved into the walls, near enough to the treasury that some small measure of light bled through their opened doors. It was in a house there that he had found his first meal since Smaug had caught him, what must have been months ago: caskets of small beer, shrivelled cake and salted meat which he had eaten in the dark, hands tied and on the floor like a starving animal, then hid in shame for days after.

There was bread too, hard as tack. Legolas ate it, though it felt like chewing sand. The other foods – meat, eggs and pastries – had started to decay, mould ridden and mummified. He ate the best of them, then left the rest alone. He knew he might well regret his choosiness once true hunger set in, but could not persuade himself to eat.

Further exploration found a series of cloths and fabrics, pillows and cushions that he squirreled away to build a clumsy nest in a corner to sleep on. There were beds, of course, and what they lacked in size they made up for in softness, welcome in the endless array of stone. Legolas could not bear to touch them. To take the dwarves’ food, to break into their houses – that was bad enough, but uncomfortable night after night was not enough to force him to steal their beds as well.

Smaug had not approached him since freeing him. Instead he remaining within the treasury, sleeping and ignoring his prisoner. In fey moments Legolas half wished that he would approach him, for as much as he hated and feared Smaug in equal measures, sometimes. and from afar, the weight of his cruelty looked better than that of the silence.

It was the silence that Legolas grew slowly sick to the heart of, as weeks passed and he skulked the outskirts of light, ever ready to dart, rat-like, back into shadows. The noises he made himself hurt like cheap imitation in the face of memory – wind and water, laughter, speech and song, each ringing in his head until he felt like he might go mad from it. The halls of the dwarves did not echo the song of the Ainur like living things did, or stone shaped by hands who could listen. Instead it lay squat and silent like toads in pond scum.

He wanted that song. He wanted to hear his father sing – desperately, violently, day after day until the need felt like it gripped and twisted his organs. He wanted the sound of conversation – of hawkers in the markets, kitchens thrumming with shouting, and the arguments of councillors. Of trees and rivers and cavalry horses. His own voice withered as the indistinguishable months passed, a seedling without light. He tried to sing but the sound came wrong on its own, bouncing back from the straight, flat walls warped and thin. When he tapped his feet or elbows, the noise struck in the air like profanity.

Eventually Legolas stopped trying to fill the silence, and became silent himself.

How long would this last for? The loss of everything meaningful in his life made him want to weep. His father must think him dead and dead he might well be; even if he had no desire to be divorced from Arda so soon, if he could never be free of these halls then what was the point of lingering?

Yet he could not to dwell on such things. This is not all that remains, Legolas told himself, and self-pity will not ease a father’s pain. He would be Thrandulion – he would survive this, and be strong, and to do that he could not continue to sicken himself with want of what he could not have. Legolas sat in the starless dark and recited this to himself, scratching it into the walls of his mind.

But thought lead to thought, and if he had not the unattainable, what crutches remained? Where was life, and breath, and sound, and heat? Where, but Smaug the dragon?

It was folly – absurdity to the highest degree. Legolas knew this. But as the endless dark dragged on, and fantasy crawled in through the gaps of his crooked restrain – even just hearing him breathe, the sound of another living creature – imagining it was a balm. Legolas curled in the dark on his nest of fabrics, and, when not dreaming of Smaug slain by his own hand, he thought of the sounds of breath and a beating heart. His father and the palace were far out of reach. Smaug’s death would remain a fantasy; his voice could not. Temptation curled within Legolas and would not let go.

Time had never been particularly marked for an immortal. Now, trapped where there were no seasons or periodicity, it became indiscernible. Legolas slept, ate, and slept again. He explored further and further down the tunnels, coming to know them without need for sight or touch, and sat by the small fountain he discovered, barely more than a pipe draining water into a bowl beneath. The sound rang weak and ashamed in its attempt to ape the vastness of rivers or rain, and its echo both soothed and mocked. Legolas moved his bed to underneath it nonetheless, for walking away back into silence had become harder and harder each new time.

Time passed. The salted meat he robbed from house after house took on an unpleasant taste and texture – Legolas supposed that keeping the food from rotting away entirely was one thing he should be grateful of the cold mountain halls for. He turned to eating oats soaked in water and honey or jam, growing adept at using his hands chained behind him, and dreamt of fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts, fish and meat.

What was the point of going on? To appease Smaug; to save his people ­– that was why. Yet when he was denied everything from light and sound to food that did not churn in his stomach like spiders in their nests, how could he hold on to the knowledge? Did Smaug even care any more? If he died, or fled, would Smaug even notice?

He lived to protect his people. But in this darkness, silence, where his people might well never have existed at all, it grew hard.

Legolas could not pinpoint when he had started to die.

In the end it was not he who went to Smaug, but Smaug who came to him. Dressed as a man, Smaug held a lantern in one hand and walked the long corridors slowly, with the air of a long-patient predator, a mantid swaying on a twig. Legolas had heard his echoing footsteps long before he saw the light, hyper-sensitive that his eyes were, with a thrill of terror. He knew he could still escape so long as he retreated and soon, but something made his feet move inexorably forward instead.

The threat of violence and pain were not punishments enough that they could drive him away from this sight and sound of life, the first in time indeterminable. Not when the only escape was into darkness and silence just as cruel.

Smaug hadn’t seen Legolas – or if he had he ignored him and continued to walk on. Legolas trailed behind, slipping through the shadows on bare feet and holding the manacle chains in his thin hands to stop them from rattling. His breath seemed caught in his mouth and his heart drummed like a trapped bird. The light, even so far away, was as enthralling as it was painful.

The long straight halls were not the same as tracking through dense forest, where the ground was so thick with moss that to lie on it akin in softness as to a bed, where horses sunk to their elbows and become trapped. Forest where great tangled roots, branches and boles meant one could be surrounded by two dozen soldiers and not see a single one of them. Forest where life and song could not be lost.

Smaug and the lantern light pulled Legolas along as keenly as a tight leash.

‘Well,’ Smaug said suddenly, as he stopped in the entrance to the main hall. Legolas almost shied back, fleeing away into the darkness. He knew he should (his father! his people!). He could not make himself.

The sound of Smaug’s voice drew him in: a bee to bright flowers. A moth to flame. A thought occurred to him, that had not occurred before: had he not given up so much already? Surely to allow himself just a short conversation was within his rights, his just due? Surely he deserved something, a small relief from the silence, after his years enduring?

Legolas crept closer. The light hurt his eyes. He wanted it anyway.

‘The stubborn elf has broken his fast,’ Smaug said. ‘I was growing impatient.’

Legolas didn’t reply. His throat felt like it could not, as if it had grown over or become clogged with mud. The sound of words washed over him like rain after drought, like the sweetest song and harp. As Smaug went further into the hall Legolas paused only for the shortest of moments before following.

Surely no one could begrudge him of this – such a small thing, compared to what he’d given up. Surely.


	5. Chapter 5

‘You’re dying,’ Smaug said, quite suddenly. He looked down on his captive, as he stood in man’s form at Legolas’ head, his gaze almost accusing. From where he lay carelessly on the floor, Legolas laughed. It was an unhappy, hollow sound. The red and gold robes Smaug had draped over him, that he had not the strength or perhaps will to tear off, puddled around his lax form.

‘And they say that dragons keep a watchful eye on their treasure. Tell me, were they exaggerating or is it just you who is blind?’ Legolas’ wan smile turned into a grimace of pain as Smaug stepped on his hand, pressing down hard with hobnailed boots. ‘Ah, so it’s the latter. Poor, unobservant Smaug! Yes, I am dying. I have been for some years now.’

Smaug stepped away and Legolas quickly withdrew his hand to his behind his back; his body shivered with tension. Smaug crouched down instead to grasp Legolas’ hair near the roots. ‘You are fed, watered and clothed. Is it disease? Why?’

Legolas closed his eyes, turning his head as far away as Smaug’s strong hand would allow. ‘Why would I not? There is nothing for me here in this tomb, far from my kin; why would I not when I could lie down and die, let my spirit heal in Mandos’ care, and walk re-embodied in Valinor? I hate this place, truly – the silence, the stone, the gold. Nothing but empty shadow and dead echo. I hate it. Not even mould grows here. Not even slime in the water.’

Legolas fell silent, as if exhausted by his own words. ‘Ah,’ said Smaug after a moment, letting go his tight grip to comb his fingers through Legolas’ soft, long hair. The action was gentle, like untangling imaginary knots. He played with the strands, letting them run across his skin, cold but warming under his touch. ‘So you’re saying that I ask the wrong question.’

‘Yes.’ Legolas opened his eyes, though barely, and looked to the distant ceiling.

‘Then why are you still alive, my lovely, sharp-tongued treasure?’ At the last word Smaug brought Legolas’ golden hair to his mouth and touched it against his lips.

‘Because of all the ugly things I know,’ Legolas said, ‘and of them there are a great many, it is you that I hate the most. I reject the arms of Mandos because this foolish heart of mine still hopes that one day you may yet be slaughtered by my hand.’

Smaug laughed then, long and loud. ‘So of all my stolen riches you are the only one here of your own free will! Truly, that is a prize beyond worth. And yes, foolish indeed – you of all people know that I am impenetrable. Such hope to live in.’

‘Hope is precious,’ Legolas said, though his words held little conviction.

‘Yes,’ Smaug agreed. ‘Quite precious.’ At that he knelt, and with one hand lifting Legolas’ head from the floor, the other on his chest, Smaug leant down and kissed Legolas deeply. In his shock Legolas tensed, eyes snapping open and mouth slackening only to be breeched; then he broke Smaug’s grip as he struggled away to stand.

‘Stop this!’ Legolas’ breath came heavy, eyes wide like those of a spooked horse, even though Smaug had let him go without a fight. ‘Would you force yourself upon me and hasten my departure?’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that,’ Smaug said lazily, looking up from where he remained kneeling with an indulgent smile. He then stood and with every slow step that he approached Legolas, Legolas took one step away.

‘You are mad,’ Legolas swore. Then, reaching the edge of the platform, he hesitated only for a second before turning and jumping, sliding and stumbling as best he could down the mounds of coins. He reached the ground and ran, feeling both shame deep enough to sicken, and yet more alive than he had done in a very many years.

He knew without having to look that Smaug watched him leave the hall and enter the tunnels to hide. And even there in the darkness Legolas could not forget that the kiss had been forceful but not violent, passionate instead of loveless. He pressed his lips against his shoulder, trying to wipe away the memory.


	6. Chapter 6

The darkness was maddening.

No, not the darkness. It was the silence more than anything else that drove Legolas to distraction, crushing as if it had, in its sheer quantity, formed a physical body. It suffocated, like drowning in slow degrees; it was inescapable, as if it had impregnated the very mountain to suck along the tunnels like blood through dead veins.

But he could not leave its realm. (Could he?)

Sometimes Legolas felt the silence cling to him, an unshakable parasite. It had dried up his little fountain. It knew he died just as well as he did himself. When he slept it smothered, absorbing into his skin like ink into paper. It sunk into his flesh and bones – when he woke, he woke within it. When he walked the mindless corridors and kept it at bay with dragging feet and hands scraping the walls, it never truly left, only retreated some small distance and all the more eager in its inevitable return.

He couldn’t escape. (Except that he could.)

It was as if the whole world no longer existed. Nothing was, except for the stone and the malevolent silence, and Legolas lost within.

Nothing existed. (Smaug existed.)

Legolas hated him for it.

Smaug existed and where Smaug breathed, where he spoke and laughed and rustled the folds of his clothes or wings, he killed the silence. Legolas, sitting blind and deaf, thought that he might break under the weight and strength of his own hatred. Better that than thin, desperate jealously.

He turned away. The dry sound of himself did little to ward away the silence, which continued its creep ever deeper into his flesh, an inevitable, fatal rot. He knew he could not last long within it.

Legolas continued to die, for he had no other option. (Except that he did.)


	7. Chapter 7

‘Well, I had best be off then,’ Smaug said, turning to leave.

‘Nay! Do not go,’ Legolas begged, at once ashamed of his outburst and terrified to be alone with naught but the sound his own failing body for company, once again. ‘Stay a little while longer; I will not argue with you again.’

‘What a fine captain of the immortals who changes his mind so quickly!’ Smaug chucked, but came back all the same. He sat down by Legolas’ head and pulled his shoulders up into his lap, where he combed long fingers through the elf’s hair. ‘Now that I’m here, how would you have me?’

Legolas was silent, and he did not fight Smaug’s hold on him. He felt much too tired, and the touch was an eerie, warm comfort. ‘Very well,’ Smaug said, after a time. ‘I shall sit and tell you about what I saw outside of the mountain just two weeks past, which was when last I ventured out, for these are the things you love and you cannot call me an unkind master.

‘What can I say? The sky was grey – mottled with white, not the grey of storm clouds – with nary a peep of blue. It is winter now, you see. The air was damp but not unpleasantly so, and it tasted of pine trees and water. I walked down the slope a little way and passed over a brook slender enough that even one so small as yourself could have jumped it without dampening your boots. Where the brook levelled out there was a pool, barely deep enough to dip my nose in, but fish shoaled there all the same. Their scales were silver coloured and they were sleek, swift little things. There were birds about too – not that I saw them, for birds fly away as soon as they see me and I am rather much larger and more impressive than they. How did I know they were there? Ah, because I could smell them, small, tender things that they are. Nutcrackers and jays, mostly, and thrushes too.

‘Ah, dear one, you’re crying.’ And indeed Legolas was: small, silent tears but tears all the same, collecting in his hollow eyes to spill down pale cheeks. ‘Have I upset you? Shall I stop?’

‘No, do not stop,’ Legolas whispered.

Smaug’s lips curled in a generous smile. There was a small bead in his hands, silver embedded with rubies, and he wove it into Legolas’ hair with dextrous fingers.

‘The pines are growing,’ Smaug said lazily, ‘from where I burnt them down. They are green and brown and quite dull, not like you or me. I can’t think of what you see in them.’

He then fell into a contemplative silence, growing tired of indulging his captive; he sighed, and his hands trailed down Legolas’ neck to slip under the decadent robes he’d draped there, stroking across a chest and stomach that had once been muscled, now thin. The skin on Smaug’s hands was warm and soft, his touch an unwanted balm against the ever pressing memory of stone and metal – cold, unliving, hateful things. Smaug sat there for a very long time, as dragons are wont to do, and Legolas drifted in and out of sleep on his lap.


	8. Chapter 8

The air shivered with the murmur of resting dragon. Smaug had been in slumber for a long while now and Legolas slept with him, giving up some time ago to curl in the hot junction between foreleg and chest; it was too quiet elsewhere in the mountain halls for peace to be found, and far away wind and echoes were unhappy noises for an elf craving life. Legolas was, however, at that moment awake, for sleep could not be a constant refuge no matter how coveted, and it seemed that as he lay on his hard bed each breath was a struggle against some crushing weight.

Words trembled in his breast until he could no longer hold them in.

‘I know now that I am no hero. I have not the strength to become one, much as it was once wished so,’ Legolas said, and in doing so his tired voice broke. ‘This fight is too hard – it’s too long. I wish to die, now. I just want to die – nothing more.’

Smaug lifted his great head up from where it was half buried in coins, but he did not speak.

‘Are you happy?’ Legolas continued, voice thin, tremulous. ‘Death is all the Enemy wants, and are you not an agent of the Enemy? Does it please you that the things we seek are now the same?’

‘You speak nonsense,’ Smaug said. He stretched out his neck, and bent it around to look Legolas in the eye.

‘Ai Elbereth I hate you,’ Legolas said, as if Smaug had not spoken at all. ‘But not more than I hate this life.’ Then he shut his eyes tight and spoke not another word, not when Smaug cajoled, threatened and taunted, nor when he snarled his anger in great fiery bursts, tipping Legolas down his mountain of gold.


	9. Chapter 9

Legolas breathed slowly. His spirit was coming loose, the threads holding his body to him fraying one by one; it felt not wholly unpleasant – more strange, as if a sudden movement might jar and rattle him inside of his body.

It was peaceful. He should let go. At any moment now he should let go and die.

He clung on. Silence blanketed the hall – where was Smaug and his deep breath, his slow beating heart?

It should not matter, yet it did. Legolas looked around the hall from where he sat but there was no sight of the dragon, nor his human form, only metal and stone. Legolas shivered minutely. He did not want to die on this cold, silent rock, alone and with none to mark his passing. That Smaug should return to find a lifeless body – the thought sat uncomfortable, though he did not know why.

Time passed, hours and days all the same, and still Legolas clung to life. Nothing changed. For his countless years a prisoner, he realised, he had come no closer to escape than that first moment of waking and daring to hope for it.

Drifting in and out of sleep, Legolas almost missed Smaug’s quiet arrival, skin that of a man again, but the flash of vibrant blue robe caught his eye and he woke with a start. Smaug was upon him like a cat on a startled bird, knees either side of Legolas’ hips, hands bracketing his head.

‘Not gone yet?’ Smaug said, half a snarl and half an awful leer. ‘Too frightened to take even this road out?’

‘Get off!’ Legolas twisted but Smaug only forced him back down. ‘Stop it,’ Legolas hissed, trying to bring his knees up between them and his arms from where they remained bound behind his back, fighting uselessly even when Smaug had him pinned. His heart came alive in his breast – he hadn’t realised it had almost stopped.

‘Tell me what you die in want of,’ Smaug said. His eyes were calmer and his face close enough that hot breath played over Legolas’ skin. ‘Is it mawkish? Do you cry out for honest words and a kind touch?’

‘As if you have the capacity to understand that of which you speak,’ Legolas said, and spat in Smaug’s face.

Smaug wiped away the spittle on one shoulder, not releasing his hold. Then he held still for a long moment. ‘You underestimate me,’ he said eventually, voice low and breath still heavy. ‘Know that your beauty enchants me, and your strength impassions. I would not have you gone.’ He leant down and pressed his lips to Legolas’, his hands cradling Legolas’ face.

‘You want to live,’ Smaug said, ignoring how Legolas tried again to twist and struggle away. ‘And live near me. Don’t lie! Do you think I haven’t seen you come close, just to hear me breathe? Do you think I don’t noticed your orbit?’

‘You flatter yourself,’ Legolas said, falling still. His blood felt alight with passion.

‘Do I? Even now you crave my touch.’

‘Free me and I will show you how I crave your touch.’ Legolas bared his teeth in a fey snarl.

Smaug laughed a short, barking laugh. ‘I think not! But strong as your hands are, even around my neck they could do little damage.’      

‘Get off, damn you,’ Legolas snarled. He twisted again but Smaug only sat on his hips, holding down his shoulders until Legolas fell still, panting from not just exertion.

‘You are dying, yet want to live,’ Smaug said again. ‘Let me help you.’

‘There is nothing you can do,’ Legolas said, but knew the words as lies even as he spoke them.

‘Only if you don’t allow it!’ Smaug leant down closer still. ‘And you will.’

Legolas said nothing, for in that moment it seemed in utter clarity that Smaug’s body, pressing against him, was everything that he had been deprived of in this place, everything that the mountain was not: heat and strong, supple muscle that moved with him as he struggled; a voice and a face, real and alive. The thought of rejecting it to return to cold rock, ugly jewels, and silent gold, threatened to break his heart.

So it was that when Smaug bent and pressed his lips to Legolas’ for a third time, Legolas did not turn away. The simple pressure woke a craving that had been escaping for long years – a craving for life, for love – and now released fully it could not be stopped. Legolas opened his mouth, accepting Smaug in; he arched his body upwards and twisted their legs together, arms straining in the urge to pull Smaug ever closer. The contact was sudden, desperate – it felt enough to drive him mad. He did not care.

Smaug pushed the robe from Legolas’ shoulders, baring his skin to explore with broad, long fingered hands. The touch felt like fire on tinder. Legolas ground his hips up into Smaug’s; blood pooled in his groin and he was already achingly hard. The world had condensed down to their bed of the floor and Smaug atop him, covering every inch of him, alight with violent passion.

Smaug was the enemy and everything about this was wrong. Did Morgoth’s creatures know love, or was the concept beyond them and the action of it mere mimicry? Did Smaug understand what he was doing? The questions arose, half formed, but he could not grasp them. His mind was awash with raw sensation. He could not think.

Legolas gasped as Smaug undid away their robes and gripped them both in one hand, but through the fervency a warning blared in his mind. ‘No, stop! Hold! This goes too far – you don’t know what you’re doing–’ Smaug only answered with a pull, a long, languid stroke; Legolas’ hips bucked but he protested still.

‘Stop it,’ he begged, for as he had felt so recently as he lay dying, his spirit unravel its roots deep within his body, so he felt again. But Smaug did not stop, and it was the same yet wholly different, for his spirit did not let go; it reached out instead in search of the bond the body could feel, for such is the way of elven love and passions – when spouses join in body they join in spirit also, and the bond between spirits is not easily broken.

For one mindless, terrible moment Legolas lay exposed in every way. His spirit reached out and found nothing, and it was as if he stood on the very edge of the void, losing his balance in a slow and inevitable descent. He did not want to fall but neither did he want barrenness – so he reached out further still in desperation. And finally – tiny, strange and distant, another at whom he could grasp. It was not reaching as he reached, and when he took a hold of it, it did not take him back.

It did not matter. Legolas wove his spirit into it like the waters of two streams joining. The spirit responded to this at last, stirring to twine deeper into him, tentatively as if it did not understand its own movements – it was only then that Smaug reacted. He gaped, shivering then falling still, eyes wide. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, voice ragged, with a fear and wonder that Legolas could taste; he only laughed and didn’t answer as he pushed back up into Smaug’s slack hand. Though deep in his heart he knew he had done a terrible wrong, in that moment he cared not, for his breast was filling up with their growing bond until it seemed there could be no room for anything else at all.


	10. Chapter 10

He felt like a dry ditch that had been filled up with rain; like a wound filled with dead, decaying maggots, flushed out with clean water. A tingle like sunlight in his belly warmed his heart, his head, and his lungs.

Legolas knelt with head down in a black corner of the dwarven city. He pulled his dislocated shoulder to himself as best he could as he listened to Smaug shriek and rage, not too far away in the pitch blackness.

‘Sheep-suckling, pig-tongued filth! Where are you? Poison, coward! I’ll squeeze your rotting head until your eyes bulge with pus – craven, worm-hearted back-stabber, _where are you?_ ’

The sound of smashing furniture swallowed the sound of his words. The corridor outside Legolas’ dark hole echoed with crashing stone and pounding feet.

‘ _What have you done to me?_ ’ Smaug howled – and yet, as pain and fear clung to his bones, old bed-fellows, an overlay sent Legolas’ heart steady with something else. The memory of starlight and rippling water come back from where they’d been lost. His pulse beat with life, hale, sturdy as the forest floor.

He’d been dying. He’d almost forgotten what the stars look like.

He’d been dying – and now he lived.

The bond he’d had forge was a thick, clean rope in his breast, coiled up like a snake. It felt solid, as if he could touch it, run his fingertips along its cool, smooth length. It tangled in his heart but did not obstruct, for his heart rejoiced. It pushed against the insides of his ribcage, but gently, and his ribs danced as slow, great bellows. They filled his body with heady delight: air, a blessing.

‘You’ve put something in me,’ Smaug said, coming closer. He heaved the words out, low and terrible, and dragged them on the floor behind him like wet sacking cloth. ‘Filthy elven magic. Get it out!’

Legolas pressed his eyes shut, closing himself to the growing flicker of torchlight that outlined the door in its frame. Smaug would be upon him soon, sniffing him out even if he hid himself in some cupboard or cellar. And was his cowering not already bad enough, skulking as he did in a stranger’s house? He would not cower like a child under the bed, pulled out by his ankles: was he not a prince of Greenwood the Great? Was he not Thranduil’s son?

Legolas pushed his dislocated shoulder against the stone table he knelt by. With the right leverage he could work it back into place – but had he the time? the courage? Even now it riddled his neck and chest with pain – swollen, agonising – drawing breath hurt. Every little shiver pulled like fish hooks on a taut line.

He was Thranduil’s son. But what did that mean, when he had forsaken his father, his homeland, and himself? Not for love of these, but Smaug the Terrible, Smaug of Morgoth’s creatures, bade his heart to beat. Had he any right to his father’s heritage, or the glory of the forest? Did he call upon Elbereth’s name in vain?

Legolas hooked his arm over the table corner as best he could, pressing his armpit down against it, easing the shoulder back into place. The pain grew like fire. Smaug’s footsteps trod ever closer. ‘I can smell you,’ he hissed. ‘I can hear your squalling toad of a heart. You’re in pain. Come, let me put you out of your misery.’

Holding his breath so that he did not gasp or groan in pain, Legolas pressed harder. He had not the correct leverage or angle, and he thought with gritted teeth and agony that if only he had a friend to help him – a healer at the palace, or a fellow soldier, or the terrible strength and exactness of his father’s hands. Legolas’ back and forehead prickled with cold sweat. Still the shoulder remained dislocated, the bone grinding over flesh and tendon in its search for its socket.

With a sudden burst of wet pain, the joint slid back into place; Legolas bowed his head, letting the breath out from between his shaking lips. He slumped back against the wall, then stood painstakingly, swallowing to clear his sticky throat. He already wallowed in shame; he would not cower away any longer, he told himself. After all, what was there left to lose?

‘I am here, Smaug,’ Legolas said, and even to his own ears his words had little pride left, only weariness.

It seemed like lifetimes ago; Smaug had not reacted – not truly reacted – until after the bonding had finished. Legolas had lain on the floor, sticky with completion. He did not move, for Smaug had still pinned him, hands and knees preventing escape. When Smaug did react, he’d reacted in fury.

He was still furious. Legolas had locked the door of the house; Smaug broke it off its hinges, and strode inside before the sturdy wood fell still. He held a torch in one hand, burning without smoke, and his eyes reflected the yellow light. His human mouth was a snarl that Legolas had only ever seen on a dragon mouth, yet none the less terrible for its soft skin and blunt teeth.

‘Crawling, orc-spawned whoreson,’ Smaug said; he dropped the torch to burn on the table, and grabbing the front of Legolas’ robes, pulled him close in one violent motion. ‘How dare you mark me with your foetid, tree-house witchery?’

Legolas head-butted Smaug, and reeled away. He spoke, even as he saw the cruelty he invited upon himself, and did not care: ‘You ignorant, bowel-throated worm! Do you think I wanted your filth smeared in me? _You_ forced my hand!’

‘I did nothing.’ Smaug’s lip trailed a thin line of blood from where it was split. ‘You invited me. You cast the spell. Canting little parasite, I will make you crawl to beg my forgiveness!’

Legolas ducked his first blow, and kicked Smaug hard in the thigh. Smaug almost but did not buckle, and his second swing found its mark; Legolas hit the wall with the force of the impact, and dazed, found himself to be grabbed. Struggling, but with no room to kick and little leverage, he had no defence but to put his head down and weather the beating that came swiftly, and brutally.

He could not count the time; after his face swelled and bloomed with colour, dripping blood, Smaug let him drop to the ground. Legolas dropped to his knees, then folded, chest and face pressed to the cold stone floor. His breath bubbled between his lips, and rasped in his throat. When Smaug picked up a chair and broke it across his back, Legolas remained still for a long moment. Eventually he lifted his head, and chest; staggering, he got back to his feet. He looked Smaug in the eye, but did not speak.

‘Take it out,’ Smaug said, narrow eyed, smeared blood on his fists. ‘Take out your spell and I will spare you further pain.’

‘I cannot, any more than you can take your filthy sorcery out of me. Do you not see? We are both stained the same.’

‘You dare–‘ Smaug said, but Legolas interrupted him.

‘Take it out, Smaug!’ he cried, jeeringly. ‘Take it out!’

‘Be silent!’ Smaug raised his hand; Legolas flinched back, but did not obey.

‘I lay dying, and you desired to buy yourself my life. Very well – you have bought it, and this is the price. You cannot go back.’

‘I can kill you yet.’

Legolas laughed: half miserable, half hateful. ‘Then do it! Death will sever the bond, that is true. But killing me will gain you only broken tree-house witchery, as I will not submit to sitting in Mandos’ Halls forever. There is no way in which you can scrape this from yourself.

‘Ah – have you nothing to say? Behold, Smaug the Magnificent, struck dumb by his own feats of ignorance! I almost pity you.’

Smaug snarled and struck Legolas across the face, then grabbed him by his long hair, shaking him bodily. ‘I gave you everything! I gave you food and water, and light, and warmth! I gave you your very life! I own you, weasel!’

Legolas struggled to free himself, and failed. ‘What you give is a mere mockery of what you took!’ he hissed.

‘You are still mine,’ Smaug said, and let go his tight grip; Legolas staggered but did not fall. As they watched each other, without meaning to, Smaug put his hand up to his chest, fingers spread as if they sought something tangible. Then he dropped his hand, and reached instead to take hold of the torch.

Smaug turned his back and walked away. Legolas stood in the darkening room for seconds only, silence as loud as thunder claps; then, stumbling, he left the room to follow after.


	11. Chapter 11

Smaug had caught a deer, and roasted it. He held morsels of its meat in his hand and fed them to Legolas, bite by red bite. His fingers, dipped in honey, pressed to Legolas’ lips, and Legolas took them into his mouth and licked the sweetness from them. Then Smaug plied him with wine, until Legolas lay sleepy and soft on his lap.

His stomach full, nearing but not yet at the point of discomfort, Legolas let his head loll back against Smaug’s shoulder, and smiled unconsciously as Smaug leant down to kiss him.

‘I hope you do not think,’ Legolas said, ‘that I need to be drunk, and fat, to accept your softness.’

Smaug kissed him again, deeper. ‘Who said this would be soft?’

Legolas laughed. ‘You have something of mine, now, and I of yours. Do not try to woo me like a youth would his first love.’

‘Then I will not,’ Smaug said, then rolled them over so that Legolas lay underneath him, and scraped his teeth across Legolas’ jaw and exposed neck. He undid the clasps of Legolas’ clothes with deft fingers, and as the fabric fell away he chased it across bare skin with his tongue.

‘I could kill you now, while you are distracted,’ Legolas said, as his eyes watched the far distant ceiling, that was cloaked in black, and Smaug had his mouth at Legolas’ inner thigh.

Smaug knelt above him, and kissed Legolas’ mouth, and bit his bottom lip. ‘Could you?’ His hand reached down and grasped Legolas’ cock, half-hard; he pulled at it, none too gently, making Legolas gritted his teeth and arch upwards.

‘No,’ he said, unsteady. ‘For all that I should.’

‘Because you are mine.’ Smaug turned Legolas over with forceful impatience, and wasted no time in preparing him with the saliva from Legolas’ own mouth. He entered Legolas roughly, holding his hips up with one large hand and head down with the other, fingers snarled tight in Legolas’ long hair. He heard but pretended not to hear Legolas’ quiet answer:

‘Because you are mine.'

Smaug then used Legolas thoroughly, sating himself with strong, long thrusts. Legolas used Smaug, rocking back against his muscled body as best he could still pinned to the floor, and when Smaug reached down and stroked Legolas’ cock in time with their movement, let himself shudder and moan to gratify and encourage. Heat and tension coiled in his belly, growing stronger and stronger, until it felt as if his small body could not possibly contain the strength of it.

Legolas finished first, and slackened, inexplicably bone-tired after the moment of ecstasy. He could suddenly feel the pain of the fist pressing down the base of his neck, and which wrenched his hair until his whole scalp ached. His cheek and nose, pressed to the cold stone floor, had, at some point, grown numb.

His back hurt. His shoulders, wrists, knees, and arse hurt. Smaug came, and withdrawing, flopped down inelegantly onto his side. He was breathing heavily, skin heated. With a sigh Legolas lay down also, and rolled over to lie, cradled, in the curve of his strong body.


	12. Chapter 12

Legolas heard the voice talking with Smaug, but abstractedly, and from a distance. He knew he wasn’t dreaming, so how could there be another voice?

Before Smaug left, in claws and wings and furious, fell dragon-scale, he hid Legolas in a small side chamber. Heart troubled with something not quite apparent, Legolas did not speak, only watched. He sat, and waited for the thing that lingered on the edge of his understanding.

The sundering of their crude bond broke like gale wind over a young forest. Something that had been warm and growing inside of him failed and died, and splintered as it did so.

In the silent room Legolas moaned a low, baleful sound, torn from his throat without permission, that descended into sobbing laughter. He knew what had happened, instantaneously and without question. How cruel – how ironic! That Smaug should steal Legolas’ very spirit, just to keep him alive and them together, only to fly away and die himself! That Smaug had been made into meat, bone and scale only, and his spirit had not fled into the Halls of Mandos to wait, nor kept out of sight as per the Gift of Men, but was dissolved and lost like that of a common beast.

Legolas stumbled into the main hall, half expecting Smaug to be there, waiting in the dark and silence; Smaug was not there, and Legolas sank to his knees on his bed of furs, and did not move. He was free, now, the thought occurred – free to return to all that had been stolen from him, save for those five companions of that fateful day, whom Smaug had killed, and the years now tucked away in the inexorable past. Legolas lay down, and did not care. In that moment he cared not one whit for anything but the misery of his own wretched heart.

He should leave these halls. Smaug was gone, and their bond void, already trying to slip from his grasp. Legolas gripped the fragments to himself, and would not let go, not even the action wedged them into his breast, cold and sharp.

It was intruders, stamping down into the hall, who forced his hand. They were dwarves, so many of them, and they surrounded him. Their voices were loud, a cacophony that Legolas could not help but quail from, and that grew like floodwater. He could not answer their questions. He could barely understand them. ‘Where is he?’ Legolas asked, but they overwhelmed his voice.

Smaug – dead. It did not seem possible.

Eventually the dwarves quietened, though still Legolas could register little of what they said. Their voices, after hearing nothing but his own and one other, were coarse and odd sounding. They breathed as loud as forge fires. They wore Smaug’s treasures. They talked amongst themselves, gesturing wildly, answering each other so fast that it felt like time itself had warped and broken. They looked at the jewellery, and the chains, that Smaug had placed on him; they hawed and hummed and eventually did nothing about either.

Smaug was dead. Did Legolas mourn? He could not tell.

The dwarves filed away, and took Legolas with them, down corridors he had not been through before, winding, low enough that he had to duck his head. As they walked he realised with hazy understanding that one of the company was not a dwarf at all, but something else he knew not of.

So much had changed in so little time. The world had flipped and become uncharted territory. As he followed, an obedient, worn-out dog, he wondered whether these intruders were real at all, and had not simply sprung from his own imagination. It came to mind that if they disappeared now, he would be utterly lost in the tunnels.

They trooped on, surely too loud to be fictitious. He wondered where Smaug’s body lay. Whether it was left to rot, carrion for the animals, or whether it had fallen on somewhere of import and had to be removed. Were they at this moment, as he remained in Smaug’s house, slicing him limb from limb to cart away the pieces? Would they keep his great skull as a trophy, as he knew some men did? And who had killed him, and how?

They passed a river – a river! Something loosened in his chest at the sound and sight, and plucked at his mind. All this time, and there had been a river here all along. Could he weep at the sight? And after the river, gates: Legolas faltered, and did not dare step forward until at last one of the dwarves pushed him forcibly out of the shadows. The wind! How long had it been since he’d last felt the cold wind on his face, and the sun? Eru Ilúvatar’s Song, or the noise of birds and leaves and the touch of rough, unpolished ground under bare feet? It seemed unreal, absurd in its exacting detail.

The wind felt as sharp as knives. The sunlight burnt. The world sung in green and brown and blue, hues of red and yellow, chaotic angles and natural form, and they blinded. The sky reached up and its lack of an end was overwhelming.

They did not go through the gates, but carried on along the outside of the mountain, until reaching an out-post. Should he have walked away, instead of following? Could they have stopped him if he had – would they even want to stop him? Legolas sat away from the others, out of sight if not hearing, and did not accept the food or water they offered, though the not-a-dwarf was insistent. Birds crowded around him. They twittered, and asked his name, and perched on his crossed legs. The dragon is dead, they told him. We’ll find your father. Hold on, prince, hold on! Friend, they called him, in their small, sweet voices that hurt his ears. Hold on!

Day turned to night, too cloudy for stars. Day, then night, then day. Had the sun and moon always travelled so quickly? The birds would not be quiet.

Smaug was dead.

The dwarves talked also. Listening to their conversation, Legolas realised only distantly that they were arguing about his own people, who had come to the mountain – when had that happened? – and himself. He was to be given back to his kin, it seemed.

‘And what if it’s a trap?’ one of the dwarves said finally, and many of the others stared at him in disbelief.

‘Have you gone mad, Thorin?’ they cried. ‘Look at him! Open the gate, let him out!’

The gates were opened. Elvish soldiers received him. They recognised who he was, though Legolas did not recall any of them, for they called his name and looked frightened when he did not respond. They guided him from the mountain with touches light enough for spun sugar, and he thought that well, for his bones ached as if they no longer held marrow, but were dead and arid and would crumble with even small roughness. When his guards spoke, even his own tongue sounded meaningless. His feet dragged; they should be lighter, but he could not make them so.

Then Thranduil arrived, dressed in armour and running alone over the coarse ground; his eyes were like lightning, and his presence the rock that waves break upon. He gathered Legolas close, kissed his forehead and breathed such reverent prayers of gratitude that Legolas wondered distantly if he should be embarrassed – though he was not. His head knew he should be joyous, but his heart was unmoved, for he remembered but no longer bore the want of his father, and felt only the vague sense that it was something he ought to have but had been cheated of.

Legolas bowed his head, casting his gaze to the ground, and said nothing. Thranduil paused at that, and using a gentle hand he tilted Legolas’ face up to look him in the eye.

‘Legolas,’ he said, in sudden anguish. ‘What have you done?’ For their connection as not only two elves, but father and son, had waned but not died, and through it now Legolas gave freely, not caring enough to hide his shame: he knew that Thranduil could see Smaug’s bond, the evil and unnatural thing that he had partnered in. Thranduil could see its forging, and it’s breaking, and the remnants of it Legolas still cradled within himself and refused to let go.

‘He is gone,’ Thranduil said, and in all his wisdom he knew of nothing else to say: no reassurances, no words of hollow comfort. He kissed his son and held him tight. His heart beat in Legolas’ ears.

‘Yes,’ Legolas said; then he wept ugly tears, which pooled up from within his ugly, broken bond, and would not stop.


	13. Chapter 13

The clogged section of river lay weedless, devoid of life, brown and thick. Smaug’s bones, still strung with some meat left remaining, broke the oily surface. It gave the air an evil-tasting presence.

Legolas unclasped his quiver and placed it with his knives and bow far from the water’s edge. He took off his breastplate and bracers, his tunic, belt, shoes and socks, and laid them down also. Bare-foot and bare-chested he walked to the water, and then, slowing for a moment to look into the depths, waded in. Gems bit the soles of his feet; the river lapped at his chest, and submerged debris brushed his skin.

‘Smaug,’ he said to the sky, and the name fell flat against the river-noise and the wind in the trees behind him. ‘I took something of yours. I have no need of it, now, and you...’ He smiled, thin and for a short moment only. ‘I am come to give it back.’

He tracked down the great spinal column to Smaug’s skull, half submerged and collapsed down into the lower jaw. Legolas touched its crest, the bone slimy beneath his palm. Then, ducking his head underwater, he pressed his lips to the ridge of its long nose.

When he emerged his hair clung to his skin, and held in it grit and clumps of dead matter stirred up from the river bed. With a foul taste on his lips and a reek in his nose, Legolas laughed and wept to let go of Smaug from his heart, and see him wash away. But with both hands open, he let go.

Later, when the stars started to emerge, he would wade upstream to clean himself. But until then he stood still, and watched the river and bones, and listened to the sounds of the wind and world around him.


End file.
